New Features in Ubuntu Studio 12.04 LTS

It’s produced as a DVD image that can also be converted to an USB stick and includes support for most languages by default.

Ubuntu Studio 12.04 LTS is a 3 year Long Term Support release and will be supported until April 2015.

Due to overwhelming improvements during this development cycle, the The Ubuntu Studio Team is very proud and excited to have users experience Ubuntu Studio 12.04 LTS and provide feedback. We look forward to hearing from you.

Lastly, the Ubuntu Studio website is currently under complete development and is expected to be release within weeks. Please bear with our current website until then.

Ubuntu Studio Applications

This cycle we focused on developing work flows based on user tasks. This should give a more complete, functional, and robust application tool chain for users to create content. Please note that not all work flows listed in the wiki are directly supported in a default installation.

Common Infrastructure

Up until Ubuntu 11.10, administrator access using the sudo tool was granted via the “admin” Unix group. In Ubuntu 12.04, administrator access will be granted via the “sudo” group. This makes Ubuntu more consistent with the upstream implementation and Debian. For compatibility purposes, the “admin” group will continue to provide sudo/administrator access in 12.04.

Hibernate (suspend to disk) has been disabled by default, as it was found to be unreliable, very slow and confusing to have two suspend modes. See bug 812394 for details. If you want to re-enable it, please follow this recipe.

pm-utils now has two new scripts to power down USB and various PCI devices in battery mode. A number of desktop packages were fixed to wake up less often. Both of these reduce power consumption and thus improve battery lifetime.

resolvconf is now used to manage /etc/resolv.conf on all Ubuntu systems. You can learn more here

Backports are now more easily accessible — to enable users to more easily receive new versions of software, the Ubuntu Backports repository is now enabled by default. Packages from backports will not be installed by default — they must explicitly be selected in package management software. However, once installed, packages from backports will automatically be upgraded to newer versions.

DVD Images — the DVD images have been cleaned up significantly reducing their size to around 1.5GB to ease consumption. The remaining software remains available via download.

Linux v3.2.14 Kernel

Ubuntu 12.04 LTS ships with an updated kernel moving from the mainline v3.0 series to the mainline v3.2 series. At release we are shipping with the Ubuntu 3.2.0-23.36 kernel which is based on the v3.2.14 upstream stable Linux kernel. The mainline v3.0 to v3.2 stable series update brings a number of new features. Some highlights include:

ext4 gains support for larger base block sizes

btrfs has more work addressing data integrity issues

device mapper gains thin provisioning and recursive snapshots

more work to improve performance under high writeback load

networking improvements for congested networks

ext3 moves to using filesystem barriers

memory allocator improvements

VFS scalability improvements

a new iSCSI implementation

software wait gains bad block management

Key changes in the Ubuntu kernel since the 3.0.0-12.20 Ubuntu kernel as shipped in the 11.10 Ubuntu release include:

The amd64 -generic and -server kernel flavors have been merged into a single -generic kernel flavor for Ubuntu 12.04. Given the few differences that existed between the two flavors, it only made sense to merge the two and reduce the overall maintenance burden over the life of this LTS release.

RC6 is enabled by default for Sandy Bridge systems. RC6 is a technology which allows the GPU to go into a very low power consumption state when the GPU is idle (down to 0W). It results in considerable power savings when this stage is activated. When comparing under idle loads with machine state where RC6 is disabled, improved power usage of around 40-60% has been witnessed.

Python Toolchain

Ubuntu 12.04 includes Python 2.7.3 and Python 3.2.3 Python 2.6 is no longer available for install.

There is expanded support for Python 3 in this release, with Python 3 ports of python-dbus, python-feedparser, germinate, lazr.ui, wadllib, python-defer, python-keyring, and python-qt4 now included, among others.

Java Toolchain

The default run time for Java is OpenJDK 6b24 (IcedTea 1.11.1). OpenJDK 7u3 (IcedTea 2.1) is available in the archive as well.

Installation

Overview

Preparing your computer for Ubuntu Studio is now much simpler, with a wider range of disk setup options. Each of these are detailed at length to provide you with a clear understanding of the actions that will take place with your selection.

You can now reinstall or upgrade an existing copy of Ubuntu Studio with the Ubuntu Studio DVD installer, provided that your computer is connected to the Internet.

Download

System Requirements

The minimum memory requirement for Ubuntu Studio 12.04 is 512 MB of memory. It is highly recommended that you have 2GB or more memory though so that the system will perform much better. More information about other recommended hardware on the new Ubuntu Studio website when it is released.

Upgrading

Upgrading from Ubuntu Studio 11.10

To upgrade from Ubuntu Studio 11.10, press Alt+F2 and type in “update-manager” (without the quotes) into the command box. Update Manager should open up and display following message: “New distribution release ‘12.04’ is available. Click Upgrade and follow the on-screen instructions”.

Upgrading from Ubuntu Studio 10.04 LTS to Ubuntu Studio 12.04 LTS

It is recommended that users perform a complete instal rather than upgrade from Ubuntu Studio 10.04 LTS due to extent of the changes, including desktop environments.

Upgrading from Other Releases

Users of other Ubuntu Studio releases need to upgrade first to 11.10, and then to 12.04.

Known Issues

Graphics and Display

Applications

Boot, Installation and Post-Installation

[Dell Studio XPS 1340,Alienware m17x] Kernel panic and hang on boot due to the ite-cir driver. A patch has been sent upstream and a test kernel is referenced in the bug report. The fix will be immediately available as a kernel update from the precise-updates pocket following 12.04’s release. (984387)

When closing the lid on a Unibody Macbook, the screen interacts with the touchpad. This can cause spurious gestures and clicks, and potentially lead to corrupted input driver state if the laptop suspends. To work around the issue, remove and reload the kernel module after resume by running:

$ sudo rmmod bcm5974
$ sudo modprobe bcm5974

Note that this may disable some touchpad options, for example horizontal scrolling. These options can be re-enabled by visiting the Mouse and Touchpad settings. This is planned to be fixed in a post-release update (968845).

Wubi (the Ubuntu installer for Windows) is not available as an option on the Ubuntu Desktop/DVD any more. Instead, it is now a separate download.

Upgrades

Aptitude does not work on 64-bit systems without disabling multiarch in /etc/dpkg/dpkg.cfg.d/multiarch . (831768)

If you have i386 packages installed on an amd64 system in Ubuntu 11.10, it is strongly recommended that you install the versions of apt and dpkg from oneiric-updates before upgrading. A number of multiarch-affecting upgrade issues have been fixed in those versions. (850264, 902603)

In some cases update-manager might appear to hang indefinitely. In that case, open the expander at the bottom and check if there is a debconf question which needs to be answered. (979661)

Upgrades from Ubuntu 10.04 LTS to 12.04 LTS do not work using the alternate CD or the server CD as a package repository. It is recommended that users running Ubuntu 10.04 LTS wait for the 12.04.1 LTS point release, scheduled for July, before upgrading. (988941)

Kernel

On ARM omap images, the networking support for the Beagle XM board is broken (838200)

[Dell Studio XPS 1340,Alienware m17x] Kernel panic and hang on boot due to the ite-cir driver. A patch has been sent upstream and a test kernel is referenced in the bug report. The fix will be immediately available as a kernel update from the precise-updates pocket following 12.04’s release. (984387)

Missing support for Sentelic touchpad in Asus K53U notebook. Patches have been backported and will be immediately available as a kernel update from the precise-updates pocket following 12.04’s release. (969334)

Missing support for BCM20702A0 Broadcom bluetooth device [0489:e042]. A patch has been sent upstream. The fix will be immediately available as a kernel update from the precise-updates pocket following 12.04’s release. (980965)

Buffer overflows in comedi driver. Patches have been backported from upstream and a test kernel is referenced in the bug report. The fix will be immediately available as a kernel update from the precise-updates pocket following 12.04’s release. (981234)

Intel gma 4500mhd external monitor suffers from a scrambled picture. A patches has been backported from upstream. The fix will be immediately available as a kernel update from the precise-updates pocket following 12.04’s release. (796030)

Kernel Oops – BUG: unable to handle kernel paging request; RIP: nfs_have_delegation+0x9/0x40 [nfs]. Some users attempting to run NFS clients on 12.04 appear to be affected. A test kernel is referenced from the bug report. Patches have been backported from upstream and will be immediately available in a kernel update from the precise-updates pocket following 12.04’s release. (974664)

Patches from upstream stable v3.2.15 and v3.2.16 will undergo a baking period in the precise-proposed pocket during the first kernel SRU cycle. They will then be released as a kernel update from the precise-updates pocket approximately 3 weeks after 12.04 releases. (981162, 987337)

hid-logitech-dj driver missing from the installer. It has been added to the d-i input-modules udeb and will be included in the 12.04.1 point release. (975198)

rtl8187 driver missing from the installer. It has been added to the d-i nic-usb-modules udeb and will be included in the 12.04.1 point release. (971719)

eGalaxis Touchscreen Driver does not work. Patches have been backported from upstream and will be immediately available in a kernel update from the precise-updates pocket following 12.04’s release. (913164)

ATI/radeon framebuffers on PowerPC only enabled as modules and not built in. This results in issues such as booting to a command prompt, loss of tty consoles, and loss of suspend. A patch to build these in have been applied and will be immediately available in a kernel update from the precise-updates pocket following 12.04’s release. (949288)

On systems with an ATI Radeon 9200 graphics card the system will boot to a black screen. As a work around edit the kernel command line in the boot loader and add “nomodeset”. (725580)

Fujitsu Siemens Amilo M 7400 and Maxdata 7000DX wireless RF kill handling triggers a kernel panic preventing wireless from operating correctly. This may be worked around by editing your kernel command line and adding “noexec=off”. (979253)

Beagle XM systems which are capable of running at 1GHZ will be initialised at 800MHZ leading to slower than optimal performance. (771537)

Some EFI systems fail to boot in EFI mode, BIOS mode is advised in these situations. (721576)

Support

Ubuntu Studio 12.04 LTS is a Long Term Support release with 3 year support

Security and bugfix updates for Ubuntu Studio are provided by the Ubuntu Studio Team and Community

“Point releases” will also be provided at the same time as Ubuntu’s, offering refreshed installation medias